**UPDATE AS OF 8:40AMet- US will be holding onto GM for at least another 3 Yrs according to one of my auto sources. Uncle Sam can’t sell enough of the debt away…

Read last night on the Acela from Jersey to DC that US Treasury Department could ask foreign investors to buy a stake in GM when the Gov’t sells its stock. The US Taxpayer loaned about $50b to GM during its bankruptcy protection and the sputtering automaker only repaid $6.7b. With creative accounting the rest of the outstanding bill was converted to a 61% gov’t stake in the company.

While foreign investment in US companies is not an uncommon thing what gets me irritated or down right mad is the taxpayer will yet again not see a dime of any of this money. The government hopes the IPO will be the cash infusion it needs to balance out the remaining debt but what about us?

I have an idea- what about giving the US taxpayer each a share or two on the IPO or better yet, if China’s SAIC does buy some GM shares, can we the taxpayer get a check in the mail since our tax cuts are not going to be extended? The US has to let China in since it was a huge bond holder of GM. Can’t tick off the country that will be leading the world in 20 or so years.

Uncle Sam’s pockets are empty because of his piggish spending. American’s pockets are empty because of a lagging economy, sad state of affairs for a jobs market and being taxed to death by our local governments who couldn’t save their way out of paper bag. Or better yet some are hoarding money. Case in point- my local taxes when up b/c of the school budget. It just came to light the school board was hoarding over $1.5 million dollars totally their surplus to $3m where in the laws it says the school system can only have a $1.5m surplus. Greed is still rampant my friends but its not on Wall Street. Look at your local gov’t and in DC.

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4 responses to “Thank You Uncle Sam!”

Might sound a bit apathetic here…in a world of fiat money where the government can run up a debt of ~$13 trillion and money can be just “given away” and disappear, how much real value can we citizens get from the $50 billion thrown at GM? Since then the government has obviously disregarded that number and charged ahead taking us deeper and deeper in debt. Even if we get back a couple dollars or a few shares, we already owe that to someone else.

I care less about the GM situation specifically than what it represents. We need to fix the root of our nation’s problems and how our “leaders” (used loosely) deal with these problems.